Boundary Changes

Recently there has been talk of the impending boundary changes. Some of this has been quite alarming for us Liberal Democrats, with the Guardian estimating we’d lose up to 25% of our seats! Personally, I suspect that is merely alarmist, but I thought I’d take a look at how the changes might affect my area.

First, what will the changes be? The intent is to reduce the number of seats from 650 to 600. Of these, 596 will be “normal” seats which must be within 5% of 76,641 voters – in other words, between 72,810 and 80,473.

As North-West Cambridgeshire is the fourth largest constituency in the country at 89,419 voters in 2010, it will clearly be affected and must lose at least 9,000 voters.

Looking at the surrounding constituencies, these have the following numbers of voters:

Constituency

# voters

Possible changes

Cambridge

75,259

+5,200

Corby

79,468

Out of county so unlikely to be affected

Huntingdon

79,134

+1,300

North-East Cambridgeshire

83,661

-3,200

North-West Cambridgeshire

89,419

-8,000

Peterborough

72,787

+7,700

South Cambridgeshire

80,001

South-East Cambridgeshire

82,265

-1,800

Total in Cambridgeshire

562,525

or between 7.73 and 6.99 seats

It is clear that ALL seats within Cambridgeshire will be very close to the maximum size allowed and some may exceed the limit. Given how fast the population of Cambridgeshire is growing, it may need to add a seat.

In particular, between 2008 and 2016, Cambridgeshire County Council project growth of around 62,000 and by 2031 a further 100,000 growth is expected. Assuming the period 2010 to 2015 accounts for 40,000 of this, I think the review should plan ahead and split Cambridgeshire into eight seats rather than the current seven.

From the list, it is also clear that Peterborough is smaller than required and that North-East and South-East Cambridgeshire must also lose voters. In total, some 14,000 votes must be transferred.

As far as North-West Cambridgeshire, the possible transfers (assuming no additional seat) that make sense are:

Stanground Central and Stanground East to Peterborough

or Barnack, Glinton and Wittering, and Northborough to Peterborough

Both of these move roughly the right number of voters. I haven’t worked out the knock-on effects on the rest of the constituencies, but it feels like a relatively small change would “fix” North-West Cambridgeshire.

As for election prospects, I don’t think this materially affects things (still safe Conservative). However, if there were to be an additional seat, there are all sorts of “interesting” ways the county could be split; both good for us and bad. But I have to say, I feel it highly unlikely we would get an extra seat given the overall objective of reducing seats.